When a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material is subjected to color development after being exposed to light, an oxidized aromatic primary amine developing agent reacts with a dye forming coupler to form a dye image. Generally, in this process, a color reproduction process by a subtractive process is used, wherein dye images of yellow, magenta and cyan which are complement colors of blue, green and red are formed in order to reproduce blue, green and red. As the cyan color image forming coupler, a phenol and a naphthol have often been used. However, a color image obtained from using a phenol or a naphthol conventionally employed has many problems in preservability. For example, a color image obtained from a 2-acylaminophenol cyan coupler as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,367,531 and 2,423,730 has generally inferior fastness to heat, a color image obtained from a 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan coupler as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,369,929 and 2,772,162 has generally inferior fastness to light, and a 1-hydroxy-2-naphthamide cyan coupler is generally insufficient with respect to its fastness to both heat and light.
On the other hand, a 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan coupler as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,396, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 155538/82 (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application") and G.B. 2,098,600A is said to have good fastness and good solubility in an organic solvent having a high boiling point as compared with the above-described conventional cyan couplers. However, such a coupler still has disadvantages in that its fastness is not sufficient for preserving for a long period of time and in that it tends to crystallize when it is added to the photographic emulsion.